Rex Murphy: Jack Layton’s hidden agenda for Quebec

The election is over, but the stale, lame rhetoric remains the same. Jack Layton, for instance, now is accusing Stephen Harper — it’s just like old times — of having a “hidden agenda” in changing the name of Canada’s “Indian Affairs” department to “Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development.”

“We hear that there are different reactions to the name change within the broad community of First Nation, Inuit and Metis people,” said Layton this week. “It is mostly a suspicion that this could be hiding an agenda of some sort. We have from time to time, had suspicions that Mr. Harper is hiding one sort of agenda or other.”

That two-word phrase may have worked for a while as a cowbell to summon all the maddened anti-Harperites. But surely it’s a little worn and thin now. With a Parliamentary majority, his agenda — whatever it is — will be on full and open display in coming years. Majorities, by definition, cannot have hidden agendas.

Related

But if someone wants to raise the possibility of a real “hidden agenda,” they should look to the brand new Official Opposition leader and ask him what’s his agenda for Quebec in the event of another separatist crisis.

The addition of 59 new MPs into the NDP caucus has brought Mr. Layton into full temporizing and evasion mode. When asked basic questions such as whether he supports the Clarity Act, what is a “clear majority” in a vote on Quebec separation, whether some of his new caucus are out-and-out separatists, he flops and flounders. I would not have thought it possible, but he makes one yearn for the relative lucidity of that great logician, Jean Chrétien — he who brought us “A proof is a proof … and when you have a good proof, you know, it’s proven.”

For Mr. Layton, the “clear majority” (as required by the Supreme Court) in a vote on separation amounts to a bare 50% plus one. The fate of the whole country, according to our new opposition leader, should be determined by a “majority” of a single vote.

Stéphane Dion, the author of the 2000 Clarity Act, which we thought had finally put all these matters to bed more than a decade ago, offered a matchless riposte to this pandering fatuousness: “If [Mr. Layton] thinks 50% plus one is a clear majority, what does he think is an unclear majority?” Mr. Layton should do the honour of giving this question an honest, straight reply.

For he cannot swim in brazen ambiguities, dancing between appeasing soft or not-so-soft nationalism in his fresh Quebec caucus and his role as Official Opposition leader for very long. Frankly, it is unbecoming of him as a national federalist politician even to try. It is part of a disturbing rhetorical pattern: Just as Gilles Duceppe always spoke of standing for the interests of Quebecers, Mr. Layton is assuring all and sundry that he will protect Quebec’s best interests.

As other have noted, all these new NDP seats are not evidence of some great fresh Quebec romance with Mr. Layton’s party. The disintegration of the Bloc, the utter collapse of its appeal, sent its supporters elsewhere. They found the easiest halfway house for their frustrations in the NDP. These new MPs are, mainly, NDP from default not conviction.

And that goes for some of the MPs themselves, too: True believers don’t seek out the slots in Vegas during a campaign.

We do not want, we cannot afford, an Official Opposition that is soft on federalism. (We already tried that between 1993 and 1997, and it did not go well.) Indeed, Jack Layton’s performance this week suggests our new Opposition Leader needs his own personal Clarity Act — to clarify what is expected of him in his new role.

National Post

Rex Murphy offers commentary weekly on CBC TV’s The National, and is host of CBC Radio’s Cross Country Checkup.